Understand your flexible culture
Griffith is a family man, which is where he uses the flexibility in his own schedule, but he learned a lesson from an old boss that he never forgot.
“It’s critical as you’re developing this to realize that as a leader, it’s vital that you suspend judgment on what people do when you provide them with flexibility,” he says. “People do different things. You cannot have any opinions on, ‘Gee, they want flexibility in order to do X, and I only think you should have flexibility in order to do Y,’ OK, because we have lots of people in our work force that don’t have children, so you don’t need flexibility for that. Maybe they need flexibility because they want to go do an Ironman competition. That’s not my business to judge. If they get their work done, and they get it done in the highest quality manner, and that client is really happy, that is what we want to drive. So I would recommend to leaders they think about it that way.”
Moreover, if you want to implement flexibility, you have to give that open mind to everyone — even your senior leaders. Watching a normally hardworking vice president take off at 3:30 one afternoon may be hard to swallow, but that’s part of fairness to the program.
“If you have key executives that are on flexible work schedules, you have to support that,” he says. “It’s really important that they have the opportunity to be exceptional performers and leaders just like everyone else.”
And exhibiting that has to go all the way up to your office. Griffith works a lot of hours in a high-demand business, but he makes it a point to flash his own use of flexibility.
“Flexibility has to be something that you begin to get into your DNA,” he says. “Leaders have to demonstrate how they utilize flexibility. So, in other words, if I’m going to watch my daughter’s swim meet … I let people know. I might say to someone, ‘I can’t do that conference call right then, but can we do it an hour and a half later, I’ll be done with the swim meet, I’ll be at a landline, and it will work just fine.’ And I’m honest about it, and I work it out, and I demonstrate that type of flexibility.”
It’s not always easy for Griffith to exhibit that, but he does his best to do what he expects of his people, keeping a smart calendar and using his 24-7 access to his work files.
“If I need to go home and leave the office at 4 and get home and have dinner and then fire up the e-mails later that night, then I do it,” he says.
That attitude hasn’t just kept home life on the up and up for Griffith, who is closing in on 30 years of marriage, it also improves his leadership abilities at Ernst & Young. His use of flexibility shows his young talent their career can be satisfying on a personal and professional level. That, he says, is what keeps the firm on everybody’s best place to work list.
“Our people want to see that,” he says. “These are really smart people here, and to make this thing a career and become a great leader and to take this firm over from myself and my peers, they need to be excited about what they see. And balance is something I’m proud of and I hope that people say it’s the biggest success that they observe in my career so far.”
How to reach: Ernst & Young LLP, (213) 977-3200 or www.ey.com
